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By Isaac Shadpour, as told to Reuvain Borchardt

 

 

You may know me as the guy who writes for The Voice and runs the LNN status, which puts me at the center of all the hock in town.

 

I enjoy living in the Lakewood area — just across the border in Toms River, actually. I love everything — the community, the yeshivas, the shuls, the stores, the people, the vibrancy. I was the first frum Iranian Jew to move to Toms River, and I’m part of only a handful of Persians living here, but that’s fine. This is my home, and I love it.

 

But this wasn’t always my home.

 

I grew up in Iran. I haven’t gone back to visit since I left 36 years ago. But I still think about it a lot, especially now, around Purim time. That’s where the nes of Purim happened, and I’ve been zocheh to visit the kevarim of Mordechai and Esther.

 

As I write this a few weeks before Purim, I don’t know what the situation will be in Iran by the time the article is published. Maybe the regime will be gone. Maybe the Ayatollah will be dead. Who knows. That would be great. It would be wonderful if the Iranian people could live in freedom.

 

But I digress. I’d set out to tell you a little about what life was like in Iran during my childhood, in the early years after the Iranian Revolution. So, here goes…

 

I was born in Tehran in 1983. I’m the oldest, my sister Leah is the second, and I have another sister, Shirley, who was born after we came to America.

 

One side of my family is from Iran for as far back as we could research. For all we know, they might have been there since the story of Purim.

 

My family was kind of well-known because my great-grandfather Avraham was the first professional butcher in Tehran, which is where most of the Jewish population lives. I’m not sure where they got the meat from before that, but we always knew he was the first professional butcher there. My grandfather Yitzchak was also kind of a pioneer — he went to university and was in the first class of pharmacists in Iran. My father was named for his grandfather Avraham, and I was named for my grandfather Yitzchak. I am Yitzchak ben Avraham ben Yitzchak ben Avraham.

 

My family name was Yeshaya, but my grandfather Yitzchak changed it to Shadpour, because he thought the name Yeshaya would be a problem in university. When I was young, I remember going to his pharmacy and watching him work. He was a hard worker who labored long hours, and I have a lot of fond memories of the pharmacy.

 

 

The Jewish Community in Iran

 

 

For generations, Iran has been home to one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Jewish life in the country — while it always had some challenges — was pretty stable. Jewish schools operated openly in major cities like Tehran and Shiraz. They offered secular education alongside Hebrew studies. These institutions weren’t yeshivas in the traditional sense, but they allowed Jewish children to learn Hebrew in place of Koranic studies, keep kosher, and maintain a communal identity within Iranian society.

 

My aunt clearly remembers when the protests that led to the Revolution began. She was walking to get the newspaper, and she just got caught up in a crowd of anti-Shah protesters. The soldiers started to shoot at the crowd, and she quickly ran inside a building.

 

After things quieted down and she left, she saw eight or nine bodies on the ground outside.

 

During the Revolution, she remembers some of the protestors put signs on the doors of Jewish homes in Tehran with red lettering saying, “Jews, you have to leave” and “Jews, get out.”

 

 

A few months after the revolution, one event in particular sent shockwaves through the Jewish community: the execution of Habib Elghanian, a prominent Jewish businessman, on May 9, 1979. Elghanian, who had developed Tehran’s iconic Plasco Building, was accused of spying for Israel and executed by firing squad. His assets were confiscated.

 

Everyone knew he was no spy. For many Jews, the execution confirmed their fears about the direction of the new regime, and it accelerated emigration. If he could be killed, we knew that with the radicals in power even wealth and prominence offered no protection.

 

After that incident, Jewish leaders met with the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, emphasizing that Iranian Jews were loyal citizens, and sought assurances that the community would be protected. Statements by the regime affirming that Jews were a protected religious minority provided a degree of security and allowed the remaining community to survive, though under close scrutiny.

 

Still, more than 100,000 Jews fled after the Revolution.

 

At that point, Jews became more careful about public displays of religion. They generally avoided wearing visible religious symbols like kippot in public; we wore caps instead. My grandfather from my mother’s side was a very pious man, but the only time he wore a kippah was inside the bet knesset. Outside the bet knesset he wouldn’t even wear a hat.

 

Rabbis who returned to Iran sometimes wore distinctive hats — this was actually encouraged by authorities, who wanted to show that they had religious tolerance. On occasion, Jewish figures were publicly displayed at state events, so the country and the world would see that Iran was tolerant of religious minorities.

 

The rise of the Islamic Republic, under the leadership of Ruhollah Khomeini, brought with it aggressive rhetoric against Israel and Zionism. While Iranian Jews were officially set apart from Zionists, the government’s propaganda influenced segments of the population that had previously had little exposure to Jews. This created a more tense atmosphere in certain areas, though everyday interactions often remained cordial.

 

Relations between Jews and the broader Muslim population have long depended on local culture rather than national politics. In more traditional or religiously conservative areas, Jews were often viewed with suspicion and social distance, sometimes rooted in religious concepts of ritual impurity. In more open-minded and secular communities, Jews and Muslims interacted comfortably, both before and after the revolution. The revolution itself didn’t fundamentally change these relationships, but it did intensify ideological hostility from the state.

 

Economically, Jewish fortunes followed broader national trends. Merchants and business owners were often able to survive inflation and economic instability, while laborers struggled under mounting pressure. Over time, worsening economic conditions affected nearly everyone, regardless of religion.

 

Overall, incidents of antisemitism did occur, though they were often localized rather than systemic. In fact, many Iranian Muslims continued to differentiate between the Jewish population and the government’s political conflicts, particularly during periods of regional tension or war. Large segments of the population viewed such conflicts as government-driven rather than reflective of public sentiment.

 

After the Revolution, the regime needed a new cause to rally the public around. They couldn’t point to economic prosperity or modernization, because those were the very initiatives associated with the Shah, whom they had just overthrown. Instead, they cast the West and Zionism as the new enemies.

 

Ever since then, they have poured enormous resources and national wealth into confronting the West. That fits with what we see in Iran under the regime today: Much of the country’s wealth has been funneled into supporting terror and conflict abroad, rather than helping a population that’s currently facing severe economic hardship.

 

 

My Childhood in Tehran

 

 

Some of my most vivid memories as a kid in Iran are, like many kids’, from school. But they’re certainly not my fondest.

 

I went to public school. The first day of school, the principal had a pair of pliers in his hands, and he said, “If you misbehave, we’re going to pull out your toenails.”

 

Somebody told me that actually happened once. I have no idea if that’s true, but it was surely enough to scare the living daylight out of all of us.

 

In school, I did terribly academically. I didn’t misbehave, but that didn’t matter — just for poor academic achievement, I was severely beaten with a ruler a number of times. That sort of stuff happened a lot.

 

Once, when I was just seven years old, my homework was incorrect. As I was walking away from the teacher, she said, “Oh, you forgot your book.” And she took the book and threw it. It hit my head. It was a big, thick history book with sharp edges. I was bleeding and crying after that incident.

 

Every morning, they would say a Muslim prayer and read some passages from the Koran. We would stand in line, and there were teenagers standing next to the person who was doing the prayers, and they had machine guns. That was pretty crazy. Maybe they were young soldiers, I’m not sure. They were just standing with the guns, perhaps just for a show of might.

 

Once in a while, the principal would go around and put their hands in your hair to measure the length. If it was too long, you would be in trouble.

 

There’s one incident I’ll never forget, where a nes happened. The principal said to me, “Your hair is too long, so go over there.” There were a couple of other kids there. As soon as I started to walk over there, there was a huge explosion that went off outside.

 

This was during the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, and we lived with the risk that a rocket could hit near us at any time. Well, that time it did. There was a huge boom, and the glass shattered everywhere. At that place where I had been standing just before the principal told me to stand somewhere else, a huge chunk of glass fell down. Having long hair probably saved my life.

 

Our school and home were near a military base, so we were always at risk of a rocket hitting near us. On that same day, after I went home, I found out that a rocket had hit near my home, and my grandfather was severely injured by falling glass as a result of the explosion.

 

There was one other time that a rocket hit near our house, but it was a small one, and luckily, it didn’t explode. My father had a choice: Do I get this out of here right now or just leave it and then it could explode? He decided to pick it up and take it far away. He took the risk, carried it away, and then called the police. That was a heroic act, because it could have just blown up.

 

Growing Up Jewish in Post-Revolution Iran

 

 

In my class, I don’t think anybody knew I was Jewish. I didn’t wear a kippah, and we wore a uniform. Nobody asked me if I’m Jewish; it just never came up.

 

Back then, there were Jewish kids who went to yeshivas, though some went to public school like me. My family was religious, though we sort of just did the minimum, and my Jewish education was basically a once-a-week program in the bet knesset.

 

I have very fond memories of the bet knesset. A lot of people’s homes were next to the military bases, and they would get fired on or stray rockets would land there. So we would often sleep in the bet knesset at night when there were air raids.

 

As much as I loved the bet knesset, adults back then were tougher on kids. It was a way of life.

 

Later, when I moved to America with my family, I often experienced severe and unexplainable bouts of fear and anxiety as a teenager. I decided one day to go to a hypnotist. I didn’t think he would actually find anything, but the condition was very crippling, so I figured I’d try.

 

The hypnotist was able to find that I had a suppressed traumatic memory from the bet knesset in Iran. When he brought it up, I remembered, Wow, this actually happened: I was walking in the bet knesset during the tefillah, and I accidentally knocked over some sefarim. The gabbai screamed at me in front of everybody. The whole prayer stopped, and I ran under the table.

 

That memory was responsible for a lot of the anxiety I subsequently had in life. Baruch Hashem, the hypnotist taught me how to counteract it. For example, he would tell me to place myself at that scene, and instead of being intimidated, I should turn the script and not be intimidated at all. I should say, “I’m not intimidated; I’m not afraid.”

 

But you can see from this how much of an impact you can have on a child. You should never scream at a kid, because you have no idea how it might shape their life.

 

So yes, adults were tougher on kids then, but there were good aspects to that, too. We used to have a real fear of our parents and grandparents. That sort of thing is unheard of today. Authority figures used to hit a lot back then. My parents actually didn’t hit — maybe because I had such a fear of them that I never really tested them!

 

 

I’m not in favor of hitting kids, and I think the way the authority figures in school acted was horrible. But I do think that kids having a fear of their parents is a good thing. We were way too terrified to ever speak disrespectfully to our parents. Today, it’s like the parents are afraid of their kids.

 

During my life in Iran, I never learned Chumash inside. At our once-a-week program, we learned stories. I’m not sure how many people learned things like Gemara seriously.

 

My grandfather was a devout man who wore tefillin all day long, and I never saw him learning anything.

 

I have a strong memory of our family visit to the kever of Esther and Mordechai in the city of Hamadan. We were all excited to go. It wasn’t around Purim, actually, just some random time we got a chance to go visit. My parents told me this is the very famous grave site of Esther and Mordechai. The Purim story was one of the few stories from the Torah I knew.

 

Leaving Iran

 

 

We were doing okay financially in Iran, and we were allowed to live in peace, but my parents had wanted to leave for some time, mainly because they were looking for greater religious opportunity for us. We got permission to leave in 1990, when I was seven years old. We were sponsored by my uncle here in America. First, we went to Italy for six months. There was organization operating there called HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) that helped us complete the immigration process to America.

 

Thankfully, our trip out of Iran wasn’t difficult, but the same could not be said for everyone.

 

By the time we left, the Iran–Iraq War was over, so there was no problem to leave. But one of my relatives tried leaving a few years earlier, before the war was over. At that time, you couldn’t leave, because you were supposed to join the army and fight the war. If the family wanted to take a trip outside the country, they were required to leave one member behind to ensure that the family would come back.

 

So, my relative’s family went on the plane to Austria to get cleared by HIAS to get to America. (There were two routes you could take — Italy or Austria. We went through Italy; my relatives’ family went through Austria.) The father was the one who stayed behind.

 

There’s a route to get from Iran to Pakistan, and in Pakistan you could get cleared to leave Iran and come to America. They had HIAS over there in Pakistan. So he drove at night in a jeep in the desert. It’s all desert between Iran and Pakistan at the border. They were driving over 100 miles an hour in the dark. They had to turn off their headlights or else they would have been spotted. Imagine driving over 100 miles an hour and you don’t know where you’re going. Anything could happen.

 

Well, he was caught by the authorities in Pakistan, and he was taken to prison in Pakistan. And in the prison, the conditions were extremely brutal. There were other inmates in the prison that the guards would make do horrific things. They could randomly make an inmate take freezing-cold water in the morning and pour it on himself.

 

HIAS got involved and they helped him, and he was able to get out of jail and ultimately make it to the United States.

 

The Iranian Jewish Community Today

 

 

My family was part of a wave of immigration that happened around 1990. It was nice for us that we were able to get out, though for those who stayed in Iran, it certainly made things tougher.

 

There had been yeshivas there, but once lots of people started emigrating, many of the yeshivas started shutting down.

 

Instead of yeshiva, many Jewish children attended limited Hebrew instruction on Fridays, because that’s the day off in the Muslim countries. Those schools focused largely on basic kriah. If you wanted to learn Mishnayos or Gemara, you did that on your own.

 

Adults who wanted to learn would get together in small groups in the bet knesset. There was no centralized or organized framework to sustain long-term religious growth.

 

This is why I’m so grateful to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and to my parents for bringing me out of Iran when they did. If I would have stayed, only Hashem knows where I would be spiritually.

 

The erosion of educational institutions had lasting consequences. While frum Jews continued to pray in the bet knesset with a minyan, the absence of structured learning contributed to a gradual spiritual decline. Without yeshivas or strong rabbinic leadership, maintaining Jewish continuity became increasingly difficult.

 

Iran has the largest Jewish population (9,000) of any Middle Eastern country outside Israel. Of course, Jews there can’t have any allegiance to Israel, and from time to time, people get in trouble over Israel. One Persian Jew from Great Neck went to Iran last year. As it turned out, he’d been to Israel 13 years earlier for a bar mitzvah, and he was imprisoned.

 

Today, Iran’s Jewish community remains resilient. Batei knessiyot continue to function, minyanim are held, and communal life persists, within tight constraints. Yet, the long-term effects of lost institutions, restricted education, and political uncertainty are unmistakable.

 

The story of Iranian Jewry since the revolution is one of endurance under pressure, sustained by individual commitment and communal memory within Iran.

My New Life in America

 

Once we came to America, we settled in Kew Gardens in Queens. Eventually, I went to learn in Yeshiva Chafetz Chaim. It wasn’t easy going there as a relative ignoramus, but baruch Hashem, I was able to catch up. I have many stories about my struggles in America and how I overcame them, but that would have to be the subject of a future article.

 

Life has many twists and turns, and 10 years ago, it brought me to Toms River. I was one of the pioneers in Toms River, and we were able to find a nice house near the Lakewood border for a third of the price it would sell for now. I still had to walk quite a distance to shul. That’s right — in Toms River, I don’t go to bet knesset, but to shul.

 

Every week, I would walk more than an hour to K’hal Nesivos Mordechai in Toms River, led by Rav Shmuel Zalman Gifter. That was the closest shul to my home at the time.

 

I’m very grateful to Rav Gifter for welcoming me in with open arms. When a closer shul later opened near my home, I began davening there, but I remain very close with Rav Gifter to this day.

 

 

Today, I go to the Dinev shteibel headed by Rav Duvid Nuchem Spira. It’s only around a 15-minute walk from my house.

 

It has a good mix, many people come from different backgrounds, and they really invite you in warmly. They even have several Sephardi siddurim there for the few Sephardim, though I’m the only one from Iran.

 

I’m a Persian guy who went to Chafetz Chaim in Queens and then moved to Toms River, where I daven in a chassidish shteibel, and I’m loving it. Now, that’s an American immigration story for you!

 

At Shabbat meals in our home, we eat a mix of Persian and Ashkenazi food. My wife is an amazing cook. She’s also the one behind all my success. The day I met her is literally the day all the success came into my life. I would definitely not be where I am today if it wasn’t for her.

 

On Friday night, the main attraction is called ghormeh sabzi. Ghormeh is like “gourmet” and sabzi means “greens.” It’s a green stew of fenugreek, parsley, red beans, and meat. You eat it with Persian rice, and my wife makes the best one. She sometimes adds very thinly sliced potatoes on the bottom, under the rice, and it’s amazing.

 

For appetizers, we sometimes have Moroccan fish, spicy with tomato sauce. Believe it or not, my kids and I like herring and things like that too. The Dinover shteibel influenced us! We skip chicken soup, which is too Ashkenazi, but we have cured fish. We also have an appetizer called gondi. It looks like a matzah ball, but it’s made from chickpeas.

 

On Shabbat day, we pretty much eat Ashkenazi food: cholent, chopped liver, and eggs.

 

My kids go to schools in the Ashkenazi system. I try to teach them about their heritage and old customs, though it’s not always easy. I’m good with them being Ashkenazi.

 

Baruch Hashem, I have a blessed life in Toms River, and I love this community. But I still have some relatives back in Iran, and the community there is never far from my mind. I pray that this evil regime will be overthrown soon — hopefully even before you read this — so that the Jewish people there can live in true peace, until we merit the Final Redemption.

 

—

rborchardt@thevoiceoflakewood.com

isaac@thevoiceoflakewood.com

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